{"id":166,"date":"2016-04-14T13:09:51","date_gmt":"2016-04-14T21:09:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/theruleandtheraven\/?p=166"},"modified":"2016-04-15T10:41:25","modified_gmt":"2016-04-15T18:41:25","slug":"prayer-and-mental-illness","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/theruleandtheraven\/2016\/04\/14\/prayer-and-mental-illness\/","title":{"rendered":"Prayer and Mental Illness"},"content":{"rendered":"<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC \"-\/\/W3C\/\/DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional\/\/EN\" \"http:\/\/www.w3.org\/TR\/REC-html40\/loose.dtd\">\n<html><head><meta http-equiv=\"content-type\" content=\"text\/html; charset=utf-8\"><meta http-equiv=\"content-type\" content=\"text\/html; charset=utf-8\"><\/head><body><p><figure style=\"width: 538px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a title=\"la pieta\" href=\"https:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/francoisaix\/4984063408\" data-flickr-embed=\"true\" class=\" decorated-link\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/farm5.staticflickr.com\/4130\/4984063408_cd66c9c758.jpg\" alt=\"la pieta\" width=\"538\" height=\"357\"><\/a><figcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">\u201cla pieta\u201d from Fran\u00e7ois Schwarz, via Flickr. (Click on the image to see his work.)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p><p><script src=\"\/\/embedr.flickr.com\/assets\/client-code.js\" async=\"\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>What\u2019s it mean for someone with a damaged mind to stand before God? How do the mentally ill pray? I ask myself this question in quiet ways, since the question itself stills me with sharp pain. A needle through the skin.<\/p>\n<p>I do pray. I also, to borrow from\u00a0C.S. Lewis, \u201cpractice the absence of God.\u201d<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>If we cannot \u201cpractise the presence of God,\u201d it is something to practise the absence of God, to become increasingly aware of our unawareness till we feel like men who should stand beside a great cataract and hear no noise, or like a man in a story who looks in a mirror and finds no face there, or a man in a dream who stretches out his hand to visible objects and gets no sensation of touch. (<em>The Four Loves<\/em>)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>I am greatly wounded, and sometimes I comfort myself with the knowledge that God has made new things out of worse. At no point do I imagine that my spirituality will be what it was. How could it possibly? Those were the prayers of one who had not tried to die. But I have no real idea what the new prayers will look like. If the present is any indication: uncertain and pained.<\/p>\n<p>Sometimes I think about\u00a0the infinite capacities of the human mind (<em>mens<\/em>) and spirit (<em>spiritus<\/em>). I imagine my wounded mind constricting my\u00a0capacity for God, choking everything spiritual in me. I choke not\u00a0really because of sin \u2013 though there\u2019s that too \u2013 but because of things I didn\u2019t do at all. An illness I never earned. I feel terrible sadness at this, and often fierce anger. I do not trust God, and I\u2019m quite aware that my distrust\u00a0is a confused knot of trauma and the spiritual.<\/p>\n<p>We cannot be Descartes anymore, especially after helplessly enduring mental illness. I am not entirely the master of my own mind.<\/p>\n<p>This is some kind of mediatory suffering. The breakdown of a partial bridge between the physical and the spiritual self. It is the place where all dualisms die. That the mind can break this way at all speaks of a reality that usually works another. Some kind of effective bridge. I am not, after all, body <em>and<\/em> mind. Not quite. I am (an) embodied mind. To try it another way: Thomas Aquinas says that the soul is the form of the body. This means that the two intimately exist with one another, all while not being the same.<\/p>\n<p>I know that people hate epistemology and such, but I\u2019m talking about <em>mental<\/em> illness and my damn <em>mind<\/em>. I\u2019m trying to figure out what it means to be a spiritual creature who can be mentally ill.<\/p>\n<p>And I don\u2019t really know. Especially once I strip away the armor of a scholar and try to pray. I am so helpless to prevent certain reactions, and still so very aware that there is more. Ritual, for example, is as much trigger to me as door. I find this fact in particular endlessly frustrating, even lonely. I want to be able to relax at Mass. Someday, I tell myself. Someday. God has made something new of worse.<\/p>\n<p>Or, you know. He hates me and wants me to hurt. Depends on where you catch me, hinges on the moment and where I am in my head. Or however it works. I sincerely believe that God loves me. I also sincerely think he doesn\u2019t. That\u2019s me: somehow always almost safe and never again safe. Always living along that God damn partial bridge of body and mind.<\/p>\n<p>Lately, I\u2019ve been thinking a lot about the crown of thorns, especially in the form of the statue pictured above. I think of Mary meeting her Son on the way to the cross, touching\u00a0the wreathe that hurts. (Or that\u2019s actually Veronica, but don\u2019t ruin my day.) What a painful and perfect symbol: the mind, the golden crown and highest capacity of every human being, twisted into thorns. Alongside Mary\u2019s shelter, touch, and worried gaze.<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s strangely comforting to imagine. I\u2019m not just the snarling possessed, the twitching demoniac who rasps Jesus\u2019 name.\u00a0If the crown of thorns is my symbol, then I am something more.<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>What\u2019s it mean for someone with a damaged mind to stand before God? How do the mentally ill pray? I ask myself this question in quiet ways, since the question itself stills me with sharp pain. A needle through the skin. I do pray. I also, to borrow from\u00a0C.S. Lewis, \u201cpractice the absence of God.\u201d [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2641,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[31,101,99,24,90,98,25,56,39,100,3,52,97],"class_list":["post-166","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-catholicism","tag-cs-lewis","tag-epistemology","tag-faith","tag-faith-and-reason","tag-jesus","tag-mental-illness","tag-philosophy","tag-prayer","tag-stations-of-the-cross","tag-theology","tag-trauma","tag-virgin-mary"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v21.1 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Prayer and Mental Illness<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"What&#039;s it mean for someone with a damaged mind to stand before God? How do the mentally ill pray? I ask myself this question in quiet ways, since the\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/theruleandtheraven\/2016\/04\/14\/prayer-and-mental-illness\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Prayer and Mental Illness\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"What&#039;s it mean for someone with a damaged mind to stand before God? How do the mentally ill pray? I ask myself this question in quiet ways, since the\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/theruleandtheraven\/2016\/04\/14\/prayer-and-mental-illness\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"The Rule and the Raven\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2016-04-14T21:09:51+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2016-04-15T18:41:25+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/farm5.staticflickr.com\/4130\/4984063408_cd66c9c758.jpg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Anne Carpenter\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Anne Carpenter\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"4 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/theruleandtheraven\/2016\/04\/14\/prayer-and-mental-illness\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/theruleandtheraven\/2016\/04\/14\/prayer-and-mental-illness\/\",\"name\":\"Prayer and Mental Illness\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/theruleandtheraven\/#website\"},\"datePublished\":\"2016-04-14T21:09:51+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2016-04-15T18:41:25+00:00\",\"author\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/theruleandtheraven\/#\/schema\/person\/54191ff407d52974ce447abdb987c3de\"},\"description\":\"What's it mean for someone with a damaged mind to stand before God? How do the mentally ill pray? I ask myself this question in quiet ways, since the\",\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/theruleandtheraven\/2016\/04\/14\/prayer-and-mental-illness\/#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/theruleandtheraven\/2016\/04\/14\/prayer-and-mental-illness\/\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"BreadcrumbList\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/theruleandtheraven\/2016\/04\/14\/prayer-and-mental-illness\/#breadcrumb\",\"itemListElement\":[{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":1,\"name\":\"Home\",\"item\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/theruleandtheraven\/\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":2,\"name\":\"Prayer and Mental Illness\"}]},{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/theruleandtheraven\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/theruleandtheraven\/\",\"name\":\"The Rule and the Raven\",\"description\":\"Dialectical Traditionalism. And whatnot.\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":{\"@type\":\"EntryPoint\",\"urlTemplate\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/theruleandtheraven\/?s={search_term_string}\"},\"query-input\":\"required name=search_term_string\"}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"Person\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/theruleandtheraven\/#\/schema\/person\/54191ff407d52974ce447abdb987c3de\",\"name\":\"Anne Carpenter\",\"image\":{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/theruleandtheraven\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/c93ff3a8fbda14b24b52feeca73eba1c?s=96&d=identicon&r=g\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/c93ff3a8fbda14b24b52feeca73eba1c?s=96&d=identicon&r=g\",\"caption\":\"Anne Carpenter\"},\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/theruleandtheraven\/author\/acarpenter\/\"}]}<\/script>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Prayer and Mental Illness","description":"What's it mean for someone with a damaged mind to stand before God? How do the mentally ill pray? I ask myself this question in quiet ways, since the","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/theruleandtheraven\/2016\/04\/14\/prayer-and-mental-illness\/","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Prayer and Mental Illness","og_description":"What's it mean for someone with a damaged mind to stand before God? How do the mentally ill pray? I ask myself this question in quiet ways, since the","og_url":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/theruleandtheraven\/2016\/04\/14\/prayer-and-mental-illness\/","og_site_name":"The Rule and the Raven","article_published_time":"2016-04-14T21:09:51+00:00","article_modified_time":"2016-04-15T18:41:25+00:00","og_image":[{"url":"https:\/\/farm5.staticflickr.com\/4130\/4984063408_cd66c9c758.jpg"}],"author":"Anne Carpenter","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","twitter_misc":{"Written by":"Anne Carpenter","Est. reading time":"4 minutes"},"schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/theruleandtheraven\/2016\/04\/14\/prayer-and-mental-illness\/","url":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/theruleandtheraven\/2016\/04\/14\/prayer-and-mental-illness\/","name":"Prayer and Mental Illness","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/theruleandtheraven\/#website"},"datePublished":"2016-04-14T21:09:51+00:00","dateModified":"2016-04-15T18:41:25+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/theruleandtheraven\/#\/schema\/person\/54191ff407d52974ce447abdb987c3de"},"description":"What's it mean for someone with a damaged mind to stand before God? How do the mentally ill pray? I ask myself this question in quiet ways, since the","breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/theruleandtheraven\/2016\/04\/14\/prayer-and-mental-illness\/#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/theruleandtheraven\/2016\/04\/14\/prayer-and-mental-illness\/"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/theruleandtheraven\/2016\/04\/14\/prayer-and-mental-illness\/#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/theruleandtheraven\/"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Prayer and Mental Illness"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/theruleandtheraven\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/theruleandtheraven\/","name":"The Rule and the Raven","description":"Dialectical Traditionalism. And whatnot.","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/theruleandtheraven\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/theruleandtheraven\/#\/schema\/person\/54191ff407d52974ce447abdb987c3de","name":"Anne Carpenter","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/theruleandtheraven\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/c93ff3a8fbda14b24b52feeca73eba1c?s=96&d=identicon&r=g","contentUrl":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/c93ff3a8fbda14b24b52feeca73eba1c?s=96&d=identicon&r=g","caption":"Anne Carpenter"},"url":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/theruleandtheraven\/author\/acarpenter\/"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/theruleandtheraven\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/166","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/theruleandtheraven\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/theruleandtheraven\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/theruleandtheraven\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2641"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/theruleandtheraven\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=166"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/theruleandtheraven\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/166\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/theruleandtheraven\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=166"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/theruleandtheraven\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=166"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/theruleandtheraven\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=166"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}